ShareThisBy DAVE KRIEGER
Scripps Howard News Service
Monday, May 07, 2007
I didn't catch the Mayweather-De La Hoya bout, but I doubt it featured as much cut work as Game 1 of the San Antonio Spurs-Phoenix Suns NBA second-round playoff series.
Down the stretch, Spurs point guard Tony Parker played with a large red welt on his forehead. Suns point guard Steve Nash played with an ugly gash spurting blood from the bridge of his nose.
The two butted heads _ not figuratively _ going for the ball in the fourth quarter. Parker at first appeared to get the worst of it, falling to the floor dazed. Nash went to the Phoenix bench to get his gash treated.
When Parker got his bearings, he walked over to the Suns bench to check on Nash. Instinctively, you might have wondered who would start the woofing.
As Nash looked up, blood covering his nose and at one point running into his eye, you could read his lips as he addressed Parker: "Are you all right?"
The two pros _ one French, one Canadian _ shook hands before Parker retreated from the Suns bench. Evidently, you can have great basketball without adolescent preening or gangsta posing. Who knew?
With all due respect to the six other teams still in the NBA tournament, this should be the championship series. Thankfully, they didn't charge Mayweather-De La Hoya prices for Game 1, but if they had, it would have been worth it.
This is the ultimate match between the old NBA and the new. The Spurs carry the flag of those who love their basketball played "the right way," from Larry Brown's famous catechism. A fundamentally sound team at both ends, they try to run their stuff the same way every time, like an orchestra.
The Suns carry the banner for those who believe the Spurs and Pistons have drained the joy and athleticism from the game in recent years with their compulsive defenses and interminable halfcourt sets. They play a loose, improvisational brand of ball, more like a Grateful Dead show.
For years, traditionalists have insisted no team playing that way can win in the playoffs, when fast breaks dwindle to a precious few and executing intricate halfcourt sets is the name of the game.
This is not exactly a new argument. Doug Moe heard it throughout the 1980s. His up-tempo Nuggets almost always made the playoffs but seldom went far once there.
Although traditionalists blamed this on the way they played, it's impossible to look back on those teams and argue they had any business competing with Magic Johnson's Showtime Lakers.
When George Karl was hired to coach the Nuggets and brought back Moe as an assistant, he brought back the up-tempo offense, too, although it's never been part of his coaching DNA the way it is part of Moe's and Suns coach Mike D'Antoni's.
The Nuggets had no trouble making it work in the regular season. They averaged 105 points per game this season, third in the league behind Phoenix and Golden State.
But they haven't been able to carry that style through the playoffs, in part because they seem to catch the Spurs in the first round every other year. I don't mean to resurrect an old argument, but if there's a game or two in the final weeks next season that the Nuggets can lose to avoid a first-round matchup with the Spurs _ as there were this year _ I say forget all that macho competitive nonsense and lose the darn games.
Anyway, the Nuggets again hoped to take their up-tempo game to the Spurs and again couldn't. The Spurs eliminated their transition game, then eliminated them. They held the Nuggets to an average of 88 points, lower even than their league-leading defensive average (90.1).
The Suns are another matter entirely. D'Antoni, who watched Moe's teams on a little black and white television as a player in Italy in the '80s, believes in the running game as much as any coach since. Phoenix is going to rush the ball up even against the numbers San Antonio always has back.
In Game 1, the Suns won the battle of the pace, getting to triple figures with relative ease, something the Nuggets didn't manage once in their first-round series.
The Spurs always insist they're not a slowdown team that they like to run, too. They lent weight to the case in Game 1, taking full advantage of the porous Suns defense to score 111 points, 13 more than their regular-season average.
Parker and Tim Duncan were monsters, doing to the Suns what Allen Iverson and Carmelo Anthony did to them in Game 1 of the first round, each going over 30. Even with a minor contribution from Manu Ginobili _ and it might be time for milk cartons for Manu _ the Spurs outscored the highest-scoring team in basketball to steal the homecourt advantage, at least for now.
Of course, if you're a Suns fan, you figure that's because Nash was on the bench for several key possessions as his cut man tried to stop the bleeding. Nash, the Canadian, will get stitched up and be back Tuesday, like a hockey player.
That, at least, should make Game 2 a fair fight. On basic cable, no less.
(Contact Dave Krieger of the Rocky Mountain News at www.rockymountainnews.com.)
